Elaborate plans made by John Cope, including a flight to the South Pole with George Hubert Wilkins, diminished for lack of funds to a winter spent by Bagshawe and Lt. Maxime Lester in an abandoned whaleboat, turned over to provide some shelter. Remarkably, the two men did perform some scientific work and observations. William Mills called it “the smallest party ever to winter on the Antarctic continent.”
p. 99, Midwinter: Days passed by somewhat monotonously. We read a lot at meal times and especially while supper was being prepared. I had brought down with me a stock of books, which, under normal circumstances, I might never have read at home. I waded through books as diverse as Darwin’s Origin of Species to light novels, but it was such authors as Dickens and Thackeray whom we most enjoyed and who could carry us, when we were feeling depressed, back to England, good food, and warmth. Many a time we had all the joys of participation in some of the meals described by Dickens.